Sutherland-Smith argues for “sustainable reform” in how universities create and implement plagiarism policies (13). Sutherland-Smith contends that the dominant discourse in current university plagiarism statements and policies is grounded in the metaphors and language of criminal law. She points out that plagiarism is an issue that cannot only be addressed through detection and punishment; pedagogy (how students use sources) and ethics (the relationship among students, faculty, and scholars) also must play a role in how universities discuss and manage plagiarism.

Sutherland-Smith’s argument is grounded in her analysis of 18 plagiarism statements from top-tier universities in Australia, the UK, and the US. Sutherland-Smith analyzed the language used in these statements to define plagiarism, to describe the policies and procedures surrounding cases of plagiarism, and to explain the outcomes of the plagiarism procedure (7). Sutherland-Smith also analyzed 164 media reports about plagiarism published in two major Australian newspapers from 2004 to 2008. The media reports were used in Sutherland-Smith’s argument to describe what the public perception of plagiarism is, and how that perception relates to how universities describe and explain their plagiarism polices and procedures.

Sutherland-Smith points out that if universities hold students responsible for citation, universities must provide training/professional development for faculty across the disciplines for how to teach citation and other source use issues around plagiarism. This training, Sutherland-Smith argues, extends to all faculty, full-time and part-time, and is essential for creating and maintaining consistent policies and expectations , such as the use of plagiarism-detection software (9).

Quotable Quotes

“Universities need to re-examine long-held views that increasing punishment and detection processes results in deterrence of plagiarism and therefore a decrease in its appearance. The equation is faulty, as deterring students from engaging in acts of plagiarism does not necessarily mean they will take a path of academic integrity” (12).

“Focusing on developing plagiarism management strategies grounded in the web of ethical relationships that constitute the living organism of the university is a responsible place to start” (13).

“Clearly, the discourse of criminal law is the mainstay of many universities’ framing of plagiarism management policies and processes” (8).

“The very discourse describing students as plagiarism ‘offenders’ positions them as ‘wrongdoers’ even before any allegations are proven, which could cause some students considerable anxiety” (8).

“Universities also place the burden of understanding plagiarism and attribution conventions on students” (9).

“The discourse describing plagiarism incidents is often charged with emotion, closely aligned to the language of criminal law and reflects nations of retribution and punishment” (10) – the language of media/news reports. use of moral/immoral terms, panic about a plagiarism epidemic, linking and slippage between the terms plagiarism and cheating, blaming Internet/online source use for a unproven rise in plagiarism (10, 11)

Logie addresses through rhetorical historicism five terms used to describe sharing in the peer-to-peer debates (hacking, theft, piracy, sharing, and war), arguing that in order to understand the basis of the arguments on both sides of the debate, we must throughly investigate the language through which those arguments are being made. He believes that current copyright restrictions, including DMCA and the TEACH Act, are limiting the potential of people to create new culture and ideas. Logie argues that the composition classroom, where students are taught about the social nature of composition, plagiarism, individual authorship, and intellectual property, is an important place to talk with students about the rhetoric, language, and arguments behind these debates and to teach them how they might argue for a copyright law that allows for the creative potential the Internet promises.

Quotable Quotes

“And while the stakes of intellectual property debates ultimately devolve to who gets paid how much and when, the mechanism for assuring fair compensation—a limited monopoly right—has profound consequences for the circulation and availability of cultural artifacts.”(8)

“Digital media offer opportunities to efficiently archive and access the bulk of artistic and intellectual work created since the dawn of humanity.

This is not an overstatement. The potential intellectual and social utility of these now-hypothetical archives is staggering. Our challenge is to engage in a principled argument about how best to achieve this goal. ” (21)

“[RIAA and other big media corporations] had persuaded most Americans that the act of downloading copyrighted material from the Internet—whatever the context and purpose—was illegal. This victory was achieved in large part because of the successful rhetorical strategies of the content industries. And once these industries had persuaded Americans that downloading was criminal, the logical next step was to ensure that it was perceived as

violent crime.” (66)

“The past decade’s major legislative amendments to copyright—in particular the Copyright Term Extension Act, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the No Electronic Theft Act, and the TEACH Act—collectively constitute a disastrous appropriation of rights, privileges, and opportunities formerly understood to belong to the public at large. At the very moment that the most powerful cultural tool in human history—the networked personal computer—has become both widely available and largely affordable, the U.S. is busily drafting laws that reinforce a copyright model optimized long ago for the circulation of print-based media.” (141)

Notable Notes

how ethos and pathos play into both sides of the debate, Burkean identification

no statistical significance on the economic effect of P2P sharing on record companies…Napster failed to show how most of its activity was not the theft of protected commercial property, but rather sharing of free culture for the public good

Howard advances a new theory of authorship that contests current understandings of plagiarism and the construction of the student-plagiarist-criminal. Patchwriting, a term she coins for writer-text collaboration (likened to imitation, mimesis, re(formation)), is not a cheating behavior that should be punished and labeled as plagiarism. Rather, it is a necessary and acceptable way of learning, a method used and endorsed throughout history as a way for novices to learn the langauge needed to enter a discourse community. Students who patchwrite in their essays and papers with the intent of understanding difficult texts, of learning, not deceit, and are doing something all writers do – collaborate with texts – except that these novice students aren’t as adept at covering their traces as professional authors are. Her theory of authorship stands in opposition to the notion of the autonomous, original author and seeks to disrupt the liberal cultural hierarchy that maintains the current power structure that has an interest in keeping students, the masses, from finding a voice. Howard argues for a pedagogy based in summary-writing as a way to teach students what patchwriting is (and to use it towards pedagogical good) and ends the book by calling for a revision of current college plagiarism policies.

Quotable Quotes

definition of patchwriting = “copying from a source text and then deleting some words, altering grammatical structures, or plugging in one synonym for another” (xvii)

“The inclusion of patchwriting in the category of plagiarism denies students opportunities to become scholars” (xx)

“We do not write alone, and often it is texts, not people, with whom we collaborate” (8).

Patchwriting is “a discursive operation not against the source author but toward the content in which the operation occurs” (19).

Need to teach students “how to manage their patchwriting in ways that are stylistically sophisticated and academically acceptable and that contribute to the writer’s understanding of the source text” (140)

“Let ‘patchwriting’ describe the act of enthusiasm in which students collaborate with their source texts for the purposes of understanding them and entering their discourse. Let us respond pedagogically to that phenomenon” (166).

move from neutral mimesis/originality binary to a hierarchal plagiarist/author binary

do not conflate plagiarism and copyright. Copyright is state regulated, legal norms to protect the individual author. Plagiarism rules are locally regulated, societal norms to protect a community….you can change plagiarism rules without changing copyright law

plagiarism dectection software: “This technology would freeze and reassert the notion of authorship in which writing is unitary, originary, proprietary, and linear, and in which the text is the locus and sole arbiter of meaning” – not allow for meaning in context, in the reader, in the author’s intent (131)

patchwriting has a ton to do with reading comprehension (cognitivist) and entering an intellectual community (social constructivist) (145)

Her breakdown: plagiarism – act of intention for deceit (buying a paper, on-purpose-cheating); failure to cite – failing to cite out of ignorance of academic citation conventions; patchwriting – a transitional stage

both failure to cite and patchwriting are pedagogical opportunities, not occassions to terrorize and punish students.

trying to rid patchwriting from students is asking them to be less complex, polyphonus, and honest & true